PopHorror Let's Get Scared
The first episode of any series has to set up the viewer for what is about to come ahead. Last night, Spike’s series The Mist, based off of the Stephen King short story of the same name, premiered to some excited horror fans. Did the TV series bring the horror and intensity that the original story told?
The show opens up with Bryan (Okezie Morro), a soldier who is the first person to encounter the mist. Bryan doesn’t seem to know much about his background, which leads me to believe that he may have been a survivor of the mist.
There are three central storylines to the show, at least so far. We have the party with teens and parents where Eve Copeland’s (Alyssa Sutherland) daughter, Alex (Gus Birney), is raped by football players. There’s also Bryan at the prison, who’s trying to warn the police of the impending doom coming. The third storyline is of the Ravens, especially Natalie Raven (Frances Conroy), who sees strange occurrences that leave the Ravens asking more questions.
The only thing that seemed confusing to me was, at the beginning of the episode, there seemed to be too many storylines to focus on. However, by the end of the episode, everything came together as the mist overcame the town, leaving its residents fighting for their survival.
The effects are good. The deaths are incredibly creative and visual. I guess Spike can get away with it, since the show is on in the evening. The best scene was when a police officer was taking a selfie in the mist. He suddenly seemed to have cockroaches get under his skin; maybe the selfie wasn’t too important.
The characters are believable. Eve plays the overprotective parent while Kevin (Morgan Spector) is the more lax adult in the relationship. The character that stood out the most was Natalie Raven. She is going to be playing a big role in the coming episodes. Natalie was the only one who seemed to do more research on the mist and realized that something strange was coming.
It looks like this will be a good year for Stephen King fans as IT will be coming to theaters in September and The Dark Tower is coming to the big screen as well. The Mist is on Thursday nights on Spike at 9 pm CST/10 pm EST. Right now, episodes two and three can be viewed on the Spike app. Will you dare to venture out into the mist? Come on back to PopHorror every Thursday as we review each episode.
